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04/24/2005 Archived Entry: "Google à la française"

I've been deluged with work for the last two weeks, with little time for blogging...but this example of dunderheaded nitwittery simply demands comment.

The French government, it seems, is unhappy with the dominance of the English-language Google search engine on the Internet. So they want to launch a French-language search engine, which is an understandable desire, even if no business of government. But the bureaucrats particularly dislike Google's page ranking scheme, "in which the law of the market is king," according to Jean-Noël Jeanneney, head of the Bibliothèque Nationale. Apparently he feels that ranking pages by popularity gives short shrift to French culture. According to The Economist (31 Mar 2005),

The flaws in the French plan are obvious. If popularity cannot arbitrate, what will? Mr Jeanneney wants a "committee of experts."

Mr Jeanneney has spent too much time locked up in the Bibliothèque, and evidently none on the Internet. Today's count shows over 8 billion web pages indexed by Google. Millions more are added each day. He's going to vet them all by committee?? Perhaps this is secretly a plan for lifetime employment for French scholars... and, come to think of it, the entire French-speaking population of the world.     —brad